Kidney cells grown under controlled in vitro conditions have a wide range of potential applications in the study of kidney functionality, the production of medical devices, and the testing of pharmaceuticals. Kidney cell cultures allow biologists to study the functions of kidney-related cells and observe cells' responses to various conditions. Highly controlled nephritic environments can be used to perform some functions of the kidney to assist a patient with renal disease, and could be used by tissue engineers to generate specific kidney tissues for implantation into a patient with renal disease. Furthermore, kidney cell cultures can be used in the development of pharmaceuticals for kidney therapy and for testing kidney toxicity of pharmaceuticals. A controlled in vitro environment can be used for other types of cells as well, such as for eliciting desired cell functions of stem cells.
Each of these applications is benefited by conditions that cause the in vitro cells to accurately replicate cells in vivo. While devices and methods exist for culturing kidney cells, traditional in vitro kidney cell environments are static, failing to account for shear stress experienced in nephrons. Furthermore, previous in vitro environments for kidney cell cultures do not provide biomimetic cues such as those provided by the extracellular matrix (ECM), so cells grown in the previous environments do not have the phenotype and morphology, for example cell shape or arrangement, they have in vivo. Proper arrangement of kidney cells in nephrons, particularly the formation of cell-to-cell junctions between cells, is necessary for kidney cells to perform their filtering and absorption functions. Thus, kidney cells grown in previous apparatuses fail to mimic the conditions of a nephron.